Towing with a dingy-gctid403050

[Guest]

I know that there was a discussion about this a few months ago. This weekend had some real life expirience. Our 39' trawler got pushed to the shallow side of a creek we were trying to anchor in and was hitting bottom with the prop. Rather than risk damage to the running gear, I decided to try to use the dinghy to pull her to deeper water. First I tried pulling with the dinghy going forward in front of the boat. No good, the dink just went careening from side to side. Next, I tried a hip tow - dingy tied to side of boat. This worked better, but I still could not steer the boat and it would only go in the direction away from the side I was towing from. Could not get straight forward motion. My last try was the golden goose - went back to the front of the boat, and tied the dingy off using the motor to tie to. Then I motored with the dinghy in REVERSE. I couldn't believe it, she pulled the 25,000 lb trawler straight as an arrow, right into deeper water. Wouldn't be much fun to do this over a long distance, but for short tows with a small dink and big heavy boat, seems to be the way to go.

[Guest]

I hope you escaped with no damage to the prop. :greedy_dollars:

I've had success that way too Ron. You can do the same thing and pull in a forward direction too, but not all motors have a spot you can tie to, where they all seem to have a handle in the front. I used to move a floating dock to a sheltered bay every year. Your method was the best for that, and simple to do.

Also works good for helping sailbloats get off a soft grounding. Pull on the main halyard so you're pulling on the masthead, heeling the boat as you move it.

The hip tow works good but you do have to get some headway on before you get steerage. Good for a longer tow, but not for you situation where you wanted to be heading off into deeper water RIGHT NOW.

[Guest]

Mike

Fortunately, no damage. Was making a heck of a racket, not sure what it was hitting, most likely logs or something.

I did use the handle on the motor to tie to, worked like a charm.

[Guest]

Wow, kinda hard to imagine that! Prop running backwards and all & getting that kind of power?

How big is the dinghy motor that you used?

I thought that you were going to say that you reversed the prop on the dink motor, THEN used reverse to pull the trawler.

Congrats! That was a smart move on your part!

[Guest]

LazyCrusr wrote:
Wow, kinda hard to imagine that! Prop running backwards and all & getting that kind of power?

How big is the dinghy motor that you used?

I thought that you were going to say that you reversed the prop on the dink motor, THEN used reverse to pull the trawler.

Congrats! That was a smart move on your part!

Sarah

8hp merc. Prop wasn't reversed, just put the engine in reverse. Basically towed my boat with the dinghy's bow facing the boat's bow.

[smitty477]

"Also works good for helping sailbloats get off a soft grounding. Pull on the main halyard so you're pulling on the masthead, heeling the boat as you move it.

The hip tow works good but you do have to get some headway on before you get steerage. Good for a longer tow, but not for you situation where you wanted to be heading off into deeper water RIGHT NOW. "

Mike - these two points are spot on based upon our experiences. This year alone we have pulled many of large Sailboats off of a pretty nasty breakwater near a local spot here by pulling a topside halyard and heeling them over.

Good techniques, good post

[706jim]

Three of us (each with 9.9 Tohatsu's) pulled/pushed a 44' sailboat off a coral head in Anegada harbour.

Guy didn't even say thanks.

[Guest]

I will make a note of that one

[Guest]

We tow logs around in order to clear a landing path for floatplanes quite regularly. Use a 12' mirrocraft and 8.8 merc outboard....and these are BIG logs.

The only way to have any directional control and make headway is to tow backwards. I hook line directly to the bow eye, though. The tow line would be a significant hazard and always be in the way if connected to the outboard.

It seems intuitive to me. Kinda like getting a canoe home paddling into a strong headwind: you won't go anywhere unless you get to as forward as you can and start digging into the water with that paddle. Think of how well front-wheel drive works on an icy road. I would not want to have to travel very far, but you can certainly move more weight a short distance this way than one would ever think possible.

Also - once the big thing you are towing starts gaining momentum, you can kinda springline/swing 180 degrees out of its path and sidle up beside it (sort of in a hip tow postion). Put your motor into forward gear so you can idle along beside what ever you towed and safely release your line.

Glad you got that beauty out of danger without any damage - and everyone was safe.

That is a NICE boat.

Rust

[RGrew176]

Truth is dinghys are not very good tow vehicles. Probably because they are just to light. I am glad that you found out that reverse worked. Will have to file that away if the need to tow with a dinghy arrives.

[smitty477]

As the size of the inflatable/dinghy grows their ability to tow tubes, skiiers, and other boats increases very qucikly.As you move into a 12' size and up with ridged bottoms they can support reasonably large motors and many can easily pull better than most would think. Also as the size increases the capability and locations of tow points goes up quickly and many are very well suited to pull 'whatever' compared to other types of boats. You can see some of these examples at sailing schools and other organized 'classes' where they use them to tow multiple small and large sailing vessels. Tow bridles, stern towing rings , and rear towing frames are all fairly common and available for these types of inflatables/dinghies. We have towed some really large and unusual 'stuff' with theses types of 'dingies' over the years

Hope this helps